“Open the door,” Charlene said.
Shaking my head, I bustled to the kitchen door.
It bumped open, and a pumpkin zipped between my legs.
I yelped.
Gears whirring, the pumpkin jounced onto the black fatigue mats. It twirled in a tight circle.
“Remote controlled!” Charlene cackled through the order window. “I’m sure to win the pumpkin race this year.”
I peered at the spinning pumpkin. Someone had mounted it on what looked like miniature tank treads. “Did you make this?”
“Ray built it. He owed me one.”
The pumpkin circled Abril, and she squeaked, jumping.
It raced to my feet. The contraption’s metal arm extended an order slip.
I plucked the slip from its mechanical claw. Charlene’s uneven script scrawled across the yellow paper: Your stepmother is here. “Thanks.”
“De nada.” Charlene pulled her head from the order window. “Oh, they changed the race time. I’m going to be a little late to your pumpkin judging.”
Rats. That meant I wouldn’t be able to see the races either. I would have liked to cheer on Charlene.
Peeling off my plastic gloves, I hopped over the pumpkin and hurried through the swinging door to the dining area.
Takako had jammed herself into a corner between a pink booth and the counter.
I glanced nervously at the sign that proclaimed MAXIMUM CAPACITY: 100. But I knew the cops would be watching that sign too and making sure we didn’t violate any fire codes.
“Takako!” I wiped my hands on my apron and searched the crowd for Gordon. He wasn’t there. “It’s nice to see you again. Do you want to come into the kitchen?”
She drew her hands from the pockets of her San Nicholas Pumpkin Festival jacket and hugged me. “I can? I’m allowed?”
“As long as you don’t mind wearing a hairnet. And don’t mind the robot pumpkin.”
Takako stepped away and bumped into a hipster with a beard a lumberjack would have envied. “I had to wear a net in the fish cannery, and I think your pumpkin is escaping.”
The pumpkin motored through the crowd, eliciting shrieks, laughs, and jumps.
I tugged down my apron. “Charlene, control that thing.”
Obediently, the pumpkin pivoted. It motored under the Dutch door and stopped beneath Charlene’s chair, behind the register.
Charlene leaned from her seat. “You worked in a fish cannery, Takako?”
“In Alaska,” she said. “But only for one summer.”
“So did I.” Charlene retrieved Robo-squash and set it on the counter. “I can’t stand salmon anymore.”
“Neither can I!”
“Or sea monsters,” Charlene said. “Damned Tizheruks. One snatched Sam right off the dock in Ekuk.”
Takako’s brow crinkled. “Tiz . . . ?”
“Why don’t you come on back?” I nodded toward the gently swinging door. “We can talk while I plate pies.”
Takako followed me into the kitchen.
I grabbed a hairnet from a box atop the old-fashioned pie safe and handed it to her.
Takako snapped the net over her wavy black hair.
“This is my assistant,” I said, “Abril. Abril, this is Doran’s mom, Takako.”
Abril smiled shyly and cut slices of apple-cranberry pie. “Hello.”
While Takako and Abril got acquainted, I grabbed a ticket from the wheel in the window.
The pumpkin chiffon was popular. I plated another slice and slid it through the window.
Takako leaned against a metal counter. “Your business is booming, Val. Your mother would be proud.”
An ache pinched my heart. “I’m sorry she never got a chance to see Pie Town.” We’d plotted and planned it out before she’d died. Her insurance money had even gone into the start-up. A part of her was here, in spirit.
Charlene, followed by her rolling pumpkin, ambled into the kitchen. “Still working, I see.” She fiddled with a black control box. The pumpkin ground to a halt beside the haint-blue pie safe.
I slid a slice of harvest pie onto a plate and set it in the window. “What else would I be doing today?”
“You haven’t taken a break all day.” Charlene’s forehead scrunched. She maneuvered the robot arm upward.
Abril shot Charlene an indecipherable look.
“I don’t mind skipping breaks during the pumpkin festival,” I said. “I had a mini turkey pot pie for lunch.”
“Eating on your feet while you work isn’t a break,” Takako scolded.
“That’s what I said,” Charlene said. Her robot knocked the box of hairnets to the floor. Moving creakily, she retrieved the box. “Petronella, Abril, and the coppers have got it handled. I’m old. I need a break. So do you.”
Abril nodded. “Have your lunch break, Val. Get out and enjoy the festival.”
“But I don’t—”
“It’s settled.” Charlene pushed me toward the alley door.
Giving up, I stripped off gloves, hairnet, and apron. “Fine,” I said, “but only if we go to the haunted house.” I loved haunted houses, and it would have made me sick to miss this one. Plus, Dr. Levant’s husband, Elon, had worked there. I doubted he’d be there the day after his wife’s murder. But maybe one of his colleagues could tell us where he’d been the morning his wife had been killed.
“There’s a haunted house?” Takako asked.
“In the old jail,” Charlene said. “The church does it up every year for charity.”
The robot bumped after her.
“You can’t bring that to the haunted house,” I said.
“Why not?” Charlene asked. “I can afford the ticket. And I need to test it under adverse conditions.”
“You know,” Takako said, “I’ve never been inside a haunted house. Not a fake one I mean.”
“You’ve been in a real haunted house?” Charlene asked.
“That’s what the locals claimed,” my stepmother said.
I grabbed my orange-and-black hoodie from a hook on the door and followed them outside. The foggy air was a pleasant slap to the face. I inhaled deeply, scenting salt from the nearby Pacific.
Charlene and Takako ambled down the alley, the pumpkin racer zipping ahead.
Since this was more harvest festival than spooktacular, the decorations were mostly pumpkins, pumpkins, and more pumpkins. Pumpkins stacked beside doorsteps. Pumpkins on hay bales. Minipumpkins in shop windows. At least there was no question of mismatched colors.
Off Main Street, the town had set up wooden photo cutouts designed from vintage Halloween postcards. Grinning tourists stuck their heads through the holes, transforming into old-fashioned witches and devils for the camera. A tractor towed a wagon full of hay bales and tourists down one street.
We passed a bouncy castle full of shrieking children. Teens putted in a minigolf graveyard. Toddlers hugged goats in a petting zoo. The goats mehhed, weary expressions in their big brown eyes.
Private homes had gotten into the spirit too. Pumpkins lined porch railings, and witches on broomsticks crashed into trees.
We stood in line for tickets at the old jail, a square, concrete building. Above its green doors a placard read: JAIL, BUILT 1911. The haunted house was actually in the more sizable red barn at the rear.
I looked at the clock on my phone.
“Stop checking the time and enjoy the moment.” Charlene maneuvered the pumpkin around a stroller. The toddler hung over its side, watching the pumpkin fly past. “It’ll be over all too soon.”
I blew out my breath. Easy for her to say. I was responsible for Pie Town and payrolls.
“How’s Frederick doing?” I asked Charlene, changing the subject.
“Frederick?” Takako asked. “Have you got a gentleman friend?”
“My cat,” Charlene said. “And he’s hiding at home. He hates pumpkin.” She smiled. “But I might have a gentleman friend.”
Was she getting serious with Ewan? The two
were perfect for each other. He even owned a fake ghost town. I opened my mouth to ask, and the racer made a sharp turn beneath my feet. I stumbled, scowling.
“Whoops,” she said. “Sorry.”
The line moved quickly, and soon I was handing over cash for tickets for the three of us. I had to buy a child’s ticket for the pumpkin.
A tall, middle-aged man with thinning brown hair stepped from the jail. He smiled wearily at the ticket seller. “I’ll take over now, Gladys.”
“Elon?” Charlene grasped his hand. “What are you doing here today? I was sorry to hear about your wife. What a terrible loss.”
“Thank you, Charlene.” Lines fanned from the corners of Elon’s eyes, owlish behind tortoiseshell glasses. He nodded, his aesthetic face somber, his tarnished eyes haunted. “Hello, Val, and is that pumpkin moving?”
“My entry in the race,” Charlene said.
“And this is my, er, this is Takako Harris,” I said. “Please accept my condolences on your loss. Kara was a wonderful doctor.”
He studied his tennis shoes. “Thank you.”
“What can we do to help?” Charlene asked.
“Nothing.” He looked past my shoulder, his gaze unfocused. “Kara was such a planner, she had everything organized, even for her death. Now, I’ve got nothing to do, except think. And I don’t want to think, not today.” He swallowed convulsively. “They said I should stay home. But I’d already taken today off to volunteer, and I didn’t want to sit home alone. And now I’m talking too much. That’s what comes from being a salesman, I guess.” He touched his eyeglasses. “I talk.”
My chest pinched with sympathy. I wasn’t sure what to say that wasn’t a platitude.
“Such a stupid prank,” he continued. “Kara’s death was meaningless.”
“Prank?” I asked.
He blinked and focused on me. “The pumpkin. She must have been trying to stop some foolish sabotage.”
“You think she was killed because of the pumpkin,” I said slowly.
“What else could it be? She didn’t have enemies.”
“Everybody has enemies,” Charlene said.
“Not Kara,” he said. “Her biggest rival was Laurelynn Lelli, and that was nothing.”
“Laurelynn?” I asked. She was wholesaling our mini pumpkin pies this month at her organic pumpkin patch.
“They went to high school together,” he said. “She owns the pumpkin farm on Lincoln Way. They were always bickering about something. It was silly.”
“Anything lately?” Crumb. I really didn’t want one of my wholesalers to be a killer. I was just getting that side of the business started.
He shrugged. “Who knows what it was about this time?”
This time? I glanced at the line behind us. It stretched to the street.
Charlene squeezed his hand. “You’re a good man. You’ll get through this.”
A cast-iron weight settled in my chest. How do you get through your wife being smashed by an oversized pumpkin?
“At least Chief Shaw is taking over the investigation,” Elon said. “It will get the attention it deserves.”
Charlene’s mouth puckered.
“I’m sure he will,” I said.
“Whatever you do,” he continued, “don’t go back.”
I looked at him blankly.
“When you’re in the haunted house,” he explained. “Keep moving forward, and you won’t get lost or ruin it for others.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right.”
We muttered more condolences and walked into the darkened barn.
“That poor man,” Takako said.
A sheet-covered ghost popped from behind a tombstone, and I jumped.
Charlene chuckled. “He got you good.” The whir of her racer was lost in the shrieks ahead of us.
Takako slid her hands into her pumpkin festival jacket pockets. “I read about his wife’s death in the paper this morning.”
“Oh?” I asked.
We moved into a mad scientist’s laboratory.
I scanned the tables for places someone could hide. A motionless Frankenstein’s monster lay upon an angled operating table. “What did the article say?” I asked.
The racer circled a long table with beakers bubbling on it. Someone squawked behind the table.
A zombie hopped up. “What the—?”
“Just testing,” Charlene said to the zombie. “Sorry, Takako, you were saying?”
“The article wasn’t very illuminating,” Takako said. “It said the body was found beneath one of the giant pumpkins, and that her death is being considered suspicious.”
No kidding.
We twisted and turned through the rooms-a haunted fairground, a haunted asylum, a classic haunted mansion. Through some trick, the barn seemed bigger on the inside than on the outside.
Takako, Charlene, and the pumpkin fell behind, and I found myself alone on a haunted pirate ship.
I waited for them beside a ship’s wheel, draped with fake spiderwebs. Charlene had been right to drag me from Pie Town. I would have hated to miss this. Of course, if I hadn’t come, I’d never have known—
Something creaked behind the mast.
I whirled, expecting a demented pirate.
The ship’s deck was empty.
Feminine screams echoed from the room next door.
I backed up, bumping into the ship’s wheel, and jumped again.
Brilliant. Scares were a feature of haunted houses, not a bug. I exhaled a shaky breath. And where were Charlene and Takako?
There was a faint popping sound. In the dim room, I turned, orienting on the noise.
A tennis ball bounced across the wooden floor. It slowed, rolling to a stop in front of my sneakers.
Oh, that wasn’t creeptastic. Not one bit.
“Charlene?” I called. “Takako?” Enough of this. I’d just go back and find them. I moved toward the entrance to the pirate room.
A sheet-clad ghost leapt from behind a pyramid of grog barrels. The spirit brandished a two-by-four. Nails sprouted from its business end.
“Okay, okay.” I backed toward the exit. Sheesh. The church took the keep-moving-forward rule seriously. “I get the point. Heh, heh. Point. Nails. Get it?”
The ghost wafted closer and raised the board, menacing.
My muscles tensed. “I’m going.” I turned and hurried forward. Stupid haunted house. Stupid rules. And what did ghosts have to do with pirates?
The skin between my shoulder blades heated. Sensing movement behind me, I pivoted.
A blur of white. The ghost leapt, board swinging.
Chapter Seven
I’d like to claim my catlike reflexes saved me. But I did not dive elegantly to safety.
Awkwardly, I half jumped backward. My heel caught on a coil of thick rope and I tumbled to the straw-dusted floor.
The board whizzed past my head. It thunked against the ship’s wheel, nails sparking off the brass.
I shrieked. But it was one shriek lost in a chorus of feminine screams echoing through the barn. My stomach bottomed. In a haunted house, no one can hear you scream.
I rolled blindly. My feet tangled with the ghost’s, and my attacker collapsed in a pile of bedsheets. My assailant sprang to its feet. Sheet flapping, it darted from the pirate ship and into the next room.
I scrambled to standing, tripped again over the stupid rope, staggered after my attacker. Pushing past gaggles of squealing girls, I raced into a weird, fog-filled maze. A werewolf sprang from behind a cardboard tree. Unthinking, I punched, catching myself just in time and jerking back and grazing its snout.
“Hey!”
“Sorry.” I ran outside the barn and into the watery sunlight.
A white sheet flapped around the corner of the jail.
I charged past clusters of giggling tourists, past the line to get into the haunted house. Rounding the corner, I ran into the pumpkin parade. The 2,100-pound winner drifted past the old jail on a flatbed truck. A young woman
in a tiara sat atop the gourd carrying a sign listing its winning poundage.
I hesitated. My attacker may have dropped his weapon, but confronting him might not be the smartest plan.
I dodged into the high school’s marching band anyway. Its tunes clashed with the faint thrum of music from the stage at the south end of Main Street.
A trumpeter trod on my foot. He glared, his cheeks puffing.
“Sorry.” I pushed past him and onto the sidewalk.
Something white flapped ahead. I plunged into the crowd.
The sheet lay draped over a juniper in front of a familiar purple house. Fog hung low above the flat roof.
I tugged the sheet free, scattering hard, blue juniper berries onto the sidewalk.
Because Charlene would have my head if I didn’t, I climbed the steps to the purple front porch and knocked.
The front door cracked open. A bloodshot eyeball stared out. “Is it safe?” Tally-Wally asked.
“It depends on what you mean by safe.”
“This blasted festival.” Tally-Wally pulled the door wider and groaned. “After the first hour, I want to commit homicide. Not that I ever would,” he added hastily. “Are you seeking haven from the crowds?”
“No. Did you see who left this on your juniper bush?” I extended the sheet.
He frowned down at me. “Someone left that on my juniper? Damned litterbugs.”
“It was a prankster who tried to, um, scare me, but I didn’t get a good look at him or her. You didn’t happen to see anything, did you?”
“Nope, I was watching The History Channel. All they’re talking about this month is ghosts and famous hauntings,” he griped, “not real history.”
“Okay. Thanks,” I said, disappointed. But it had been a long shot. “I’ll see you around.”
“See you tomorrow morning.” He shut the door.
I hurried back to the old jail.
Takako waited beside the ticket line, her head swiveling anxiously.
“Blood is all well and good,” Charlene said to a kid in a zombie costume. “But what you need is more gore. A disconnected eyeball. Rotting flesh.”
His mother hurried forward. She grasped the boy’s shoulders, tugging him away and frowning at Charlene.
“Parents,” Charlene said. “They ruin all the fun.”
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